ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) — Search teams were still digging at the site of deadly landslides in southern Ethiopia on Friday as the death toll rose to 257, according to the U.N. humanitarian office.
Heavy rain shot deadly slides on Sundays and Mondays in a remote part of the country. The UN humanitarian office, known as OCHA, said in an update on Thursday that the death toll could rise to as many as 500, citing local officials.
“More than 15,000 affected people need to be evacuated” from the area, he said.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is expected to visit the remote area on Friday. Mudslides were triggered by heavy rains in recent days. Abiy said earlier this week that she was “deeply saddened by this terrible loss.”
Photos from the scene show residents standing over the shrouded bodies of landslide victims as they are being pulled, one by one, from the muddy earth. Excavators have been using hand shovels to sift through the mud.
Many people were buried in the Gofa area of Kencho Shacha Gozdi district on Monday as rescuers scoured the steep terrain for survivors of the previous day’s landslides.
Landslides are common during Ethiopia’s rainy season, which began in July and is expected to last until mid-September.
Deadly landslides occur frequently across the wider region of East Africa, from mountainous eastern Uganda to the highlands of central Kenya. In April, at least 45 people were killed in Kenya’s Rift Valley region, when flash floods and a landslide swept away homes and blocked a main road.
